I believe the Columbia University admission process has some elements of finding people with gold in their make-up, but is also composed of other different and complicated components. I agree with a lot of what Allison shared in an earlier comment; I think that Columbia, and other selective universities, jobs, and communities like it are expected to, and pride themselves on, evaluating people to find a holistic view of their life experiences. However, I think that in practice, the admissions process doesn't live up to it's stated aim; even if it doesn't seek to test people extremely early-on in life to find some sort of innate ability or goodness (in the way Plato suggests is necessary) that would qualify them for a higher track in life, it still expects that people achieve to a particular gold-like standard, in a way that is unfair and can even be oppressive. I think Columbia’s administration and admissions departments understand themselves as among many gatekeepers to a particular kind of success and safety in the United States. They carry so much social and financial power and so much power that can be shared with their graduates. Universities like Columbia then get to establish a certain standard of success in the United States, and advertise themselves as parts of a meritocracy; however, in reality, not everyone is made to succeed or even survive at places like Columbia. Columbia is not a place that was designed with people of color, trans people, women, people with disabilities, etc. at the center of its mission, and in a lot of ways that legacy is alive and present in the everyday lives of so many of its students. I think that should be completely okay that Columbia and universities like it don’t mesh with everyone’s way of being — people should have the right to thrive, learn, live in the ways they want to, and survive even without fitting Columbia’s standard of “gold” or success-worthy-ness. I think problems show up when, in reality, that survival and thriving isn’t always an option outside of attending higher education institutions, the institutions themselves aren’t set up to support students with different needs even when they match those achievement levels at some point in their lives, and Columbia benefits from and helps prop up a system where it’s just given that some people deserve less and others deserve more.
